A showdown looms in the fight for control of the country -- with Africa's largest oilfields as the prize
by Bethan McKernan
In August 2011, as Libya's rebels and Nato jets began an assault
on Tripoli, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi delivered a speech calling on
his supporters to defend the country from foreign invaders.
"There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan
land, to colonise Libya once again. This is impossible,
impossible. We will fight until the last man and last woman to
defend Libya from east to west, north to south," he said in a
message broadcast by a pro-regime television station. Two months
later, the dictator was dragged bleeding and confused from a storm
drain in his hometown of Sirte, before being killed.
Nine years on, after the outbreak of a second civil war, Gaddafi's
proclamation is not far from the truth -- but as the US has
retreated from the role it played in his downfall, a constellation
of emboldened regional powers has descended on Libya instead. As
the battle moves to Sirte, gateway to the country's oil crescent, . . .
TRANSCRIPT: So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock
that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's the chronological description of how she
was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around
40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European
refugee and migrant crisis.--"Julian Assange Speaks About
Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Election and the Litany of Charges Against Him,"
truthdig.com, November 5, 2016
Nick Turse, "Violence Has Spiked in Africa Since the Military Founded AFRICOM,
Pentagon Study Finds," The Intercept,
July 29 2019
Chaos, slave trade & war crimes: Libya still in turmoil 10 years after NATO-led
intervention, RT, February 15, 2021
Ukraine crisis: Why doesn't the West show the same outrage for wars in the Middle East?, CGTN, March 11, 2022